Growth and innovation through reliability testing

A general model is developed to describe the growth in product reliability during testing that can be attributed to two separate processes: innovation and fine-tuning. Innovation results from re-engineering the product to overcome problems identified on test. The effects of such innovations may, or may not, be beneficial. However following these there can be stable periods when only fine-tuning of the product will be carried out and some improvement in reliability is likely to be achieved. A specific example of the general model is described and its use illustrated by application to data. Finally reliability growth modelling is considered within the context of the wider issues associated with achieving innovation through testing.